


Stars Hollow

by Merideath



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, a very vague Gilmore Girls au, because coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8469697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merideath/pseuds/Merideath
Summary: “I have high hopes for this one,” Darcy says. “The Yelp reviews say the coffee is good.”
“But not the service,” Jane says waving her hands at the door.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladysarah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladysarah/gifts).



> This one is all ladysarah's fault. She asked for a Gilmore Girls au and all I could think was Darcy and Jane as siblings, instead of mother and daughter sharing the same first name. So really it isn't Gilmore Girls at all. But there is coffee and Steve so... I've watched the show but only the first season and a few random episodes, all I really remember is coffee and snark. Hopefully, that is good enough. 
> 
> Thanks go to Dizzyredhead for betaing my awful grammar. 
> 
> Thanks also go to all my loyal readers who come back again and again to read all the fluff I write. I've not been feeling so much like a storyteller of late, my brain has been a bit squirrelly, but I'm trying as best I can.

“Steve’s Cafe. Sounds like a real winner,” Jane says.

“I have high hopes for this one,” Darcy says. “The Yelp reviews say the coffee is good.”

“But not the service,” Jane says waving her hands at the door. “After you.”

“Don't mind if I do, Janey.”

“God, you're such an embarrassment,” Jane says. 

“It runs in the family, squirt,” Darcy says, ruffling Jane’s hair and ignoring her protests as she enters the coffee shop. It's busy inside; nearly half the mismatched tables and chairs are full.  Darcy crosses her fingers and hopes that it’s a good sign. 

The scents of coffee, bacon, and syrup permeate the air, and Darcy closes her eyes, breathing in the delicious scent.

“I'll go find us a table,” Jane says imperiously. She slips away from Darcy’s side, the weight of the world, or just the weight of a backpack filled with textbooks, heavy on her slim shoulders. Jane was all of fifteen years old, though sometimes she seemed to be far older than Darcy.

The place isn’t quite kitschy, with its mismatched chairs, open brickwork, massive espresso machine, and messy bookshelves. Darcy’s fingers itch to tidy up the books, line them up neatly, despite the fact she hadn't even begun to unpack the boxes containing her books, Jane’s books, or the ones their parents had collected. 

There was so much to do and no time to do it before Jane started at Culver Prep and Darcy continued to pretend she knew what she was doing as an adult. They have a plan, and she;s determined that Jane will stick to it, no matter what happens to Darcy’s dreams. Her dreams crashed and burned a year ago in the accident that claimed Lorelei Lewis and Jake Foster’s lives. Darcy spends her time these days dealing with far more paperwork and adult decisions without feeling remotely like an adult herself. 

She needs to take Jane shopping for school things, buy food that had more nutrition than the pop-tarts Jane had been eating all week, fill out more damn forms for Culver, and find an optician. The day was filling up already and it had hardly started yet. 

But first, coffee.

Darcy marches up to the counter chanting “please be good, please be good” under her breath.  Paper bags with Howling Coffee Roasters stickers on them line up beside the pastry counter and a man behind the counter in a plaid shirt is steaming milk. The beard, the hint of a tattoo peeking out from the open buttons of a white henley beneath all the plaid, and the whole lumberjack chic would have screamed hipster, if not for the backward ball cap perched on his head and the slightly rumpled look of him. 

Darcy isn’t in the mood for pretty frat-boy/hipster mashups. All she wants is a cup of coffee that didn’t start out as floor sweepings collected in a jar. “Triple shot latte and a mocha with whipped cream and extra syrup, like Mount Olympus levels of cream and enough chocolate to light up the city for a week.”

“You’re gonna have to wait a minute. It's busy,” Plaid Shirt says. 

“I don't have a minute, this is a life or death situation.” 

“I’ll bet.”

“Look, my sister and I have been in Stars Hollow for six days. Do you know how many coffee shops this town has? Three. Three coffee shops and not one of them is a Starbucks.Three! You are my last and only hope. Did you know one of them doesn't have a real espresso machine, just some geriatric pot monstrosity from the 70s? They tried to serve me lukewarm bean water. Bean water!”

“That’s what coffee is,” Plaid Shirt says. He reaches up for a clean cup, shirt stretching over wide shoulders. 

“-and a chocolate, apricot kernel, and kale muffin. Who puts kale in muffins?”

“Rabbits?”

“Exactly,” Darcy says, typing on her phone. “The other one. Just, no, I don't want to relive that nightmare. What's your wifi password?”

“Don't have it.”

“What do you mean you don't have the password?”

“Don't have wifi.”

“It's down?”

“No, jus’ never got around to getting it. Here you go, one triple shot latte and a mocha with enough syrup to send you into a sugar coma,” Plaid Shirt says. “That’ll be five dollars. Unless I can interest you in food.”

“Coffee first,” Darcy says, digging money out of her purse and dropping it into his open hand. “Gimme.” She makes grabby hands at the latte and coffee shop guy arches a brow, pushing the mug across the counter into Darcy’s hands. The cup is some sort of earthenware thing, glazed in dark brown with streaks of blue and dappled white. There is no fancy leaf design or cute cat drawn in the foam, just a swirl. “Janey, coffee.” 

The teen looks up from the stack of books she’s brought into the cafe and rolls her eyes at Darcy. Jane drags herself up to her feet and makes her way to the counter as Darcy lifts her mug up. Darcy takes a cautious sip, closing her eyes and letting the hot liquid roll over her tongue and down her throat. She moans happily, holding the mug close, warm steam rising up to fog her glasses. “Oh. My. God. This is good. Did you know how good this is? This is really good. Like the best thing I’ve had in my mouth in years. Time to pick out a china pattern good.”

“Darcy,” Jane hisses under her breath, cheeks flushing red. “Why are you like this?”  
  


“What? It’s good coffee, Jane. The man needs to know it’s fantastic, like, I want to have your babies fantastic,” she says, gripping the mug tighter and hugging it to her chest. Jane rolls her eyes and backs away from Darcy and the counter, wiping dripping whipped cream from the side of her mug and muttering under her breath.

“My sister is fifteen, she doesn’t fully understand the importance of good coffee yet. Do you know how good this is? Really, really good coffee. A+ would drink again, good.”

“I’ve been told,” he says. 

“Tell your boss you need a raise.”

“It’s my place.”

“You’re the Steve in Steve’s Cafe.”

“The _‘The’_ seems a bit pretentious. It’s just Steve.”

“You give good latte, Steve,” she says, raising her mug in salute.

“I know,” he says. “Thanks.”


End file.
